Managing Diversity
Challenge: The board of trustees of a non-profit environmental group expressed concern about the organization’s inability to retain information technology and other support personnel in their headquarters office. The executive director, upon reviewing the exit interviews of the resigning employees found a pattern in their reasons given for leaving — lack of respect and not feeling comfortable in the work environment. The director suspected the non-profit had diversity challenges.
Solution: During the Aligning Culture with Business Session, the board of directors, senior managers and a cross-section of field and headquarter employees openly discussed what made their organization successful. It was agreed upon that dedication to their environmental mission was a critical strategic driver of their organizational culture. They also came to realize that being personally passionate about this mission was necessary for employees to be fully accepted and recognized for their work.
It became clear that this passion for mission was an assimilation tradition, and it was important to understanding the retention issue of headquarter personnel. A number of the headquarter employees noted that they were dedicated to the mission, but not necessarily passionate about it. And, they felt that their contributions to the mission were not recognized and their lack of passion limited their advancement opportunities. At the same time, many of these headquarter employees happened to be Hispanic-Americans, due to the geographic location of the headquarters. The board of directors realized they had a complex managing diversity dilemma that needed to be strategically addressed.
Results: The board directed senior management to develop a strategic diversity plan, and to continue the internal dialogue around where passion for the mission was truly a job requirement and where it was not. It was agreed upon that in public speaking and in certain field operations, it was a requirement, but that in other jobs, a more level headed and scientific approach would be more useful to achieving the organization’s mission. The diversity strategic plan included detailed job descriptions that regarding skills and job competencies, so that promotion decisions would be based on specific requirements rather than traditions. Senior managers, as part of their overall responsibility to manage culture, started talking about the need to balance passion and dedication as the new strategic drivers of the non-profit.